Ok, color us baffled, but we understand the reasoning behind it. Nokia recently celebrated the launching of their new Meego smartphone, the Nokia N9, with a party attended by celebrities, high-profile clientele, and of course awesome media people like us. In order to demonstrate the “power of a finger” – presumably to signify what you could do with the Nokia N9’s buttonless swipe-friendly buttonless interface – they played a couple of games with celebrities with the theme surrounding their fingers. So yeah, that was the reasoning behind it. And assuming KFC doesn’t sue us for using their finger lickin’ tagline, let’s go ahead and talk about the phone a bit.

The Nokia N9 in multiple colors

The Nokia N9 is the Finnish company’s newest smartphone and is powered by a unique Linux-based system called Meego. The phone has no front physical buttons and that’s because the software and hardware has been designed to be completely buttonless – relying on swiping gestures to switch tasks, close tasks, open more apps, and the plethora of other things you could do with smartphones. It packs a 3.9” 854×480 AMOLED screen, 1Ghz processor, 8MP camera with dual LED flash, 720p @ 30fps video recording, a front facing camera (needs an OS update for front camera), and the usual smartphone features like WiFi b/g/n, A-GPS, etc. The phone also has an NFC chip that Nokia is heavily supporting with its new devices. The Meego OS phone is probably the last of its kind to come out, because Nokia will be going for Windows Phone devices soon, but the smartphone can still hold its own as a standalone product.

During the release celebration held at the Fort, celebrities were invited onstage to play what we’d call some “parlor” games involving their fingers. One was a food eating game, where you had to feed teammates with your finger and not yourself. While another had three celeb contestants try to make the host laugh with just one finger.

Overall, the connection between the games and the phone can be considered a stretch at best, but we understand what the object of it all was. The Nokia N9 is available now unlocked for PHP 25k (16GB) and PHP 29.5k (64GB). You can also get your Nokia N9 free with Smart’s Unlimited Data Plan 2000 (16GB), Plan 3000 (64GB), or All-in Plan 3500 (16GB).

For more articles about the Nokia N9, check out our archives here. And for more pictures of the event, check out our gallery below!